


Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

by Khriskin



Series: Skipping Stones [3]
Category: Original Work, Original Work: Skipping Stones
Genre: Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khriskin/pseuds/Khriskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world cheered when the first pod skipped from low Earth orbit to Mars...</p><p>~*~*~*~*~</p><p>Skipping Stones is a Science Fiction (Soft) 'verse where space travel is done by bending four dimensions into three-- but it doesn't always work. The Lost ships do return, but they've fallen out of step with time and don't appear to age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

The world cheered when the first pod skipped from low Earth orbit to Mars, then onto Pluto in the same fraction of a second. The race outwards into the universe had finally begun!

But skipping was a dangerous thing, and sometimes things that skipped into the Nothing never skipped out again. 

Statistically it was safer than driving, but the PR firms knew statistics never helped when there was that looming chance of instant death. That's why the pods that skipped people around the universe never held more than two people. They'd learned from earlier attempts that there was a maximum number of deaths the public would allow. When the expected ship in a ten thousand vanished, it was only two lives and not a hundred or a thousand. The national news didn't blink, they were acceptable losses.

It wasn't until six months later when one of the Lost skipped back in from the Nothing that the losses suddenly weren't acceptable anymore.


End file.
